At least 73 people were killed in a nighttime fire in Johannesburg that tore through a dilapidated five-story building occupied by squatters and the homeless, according to emergency services in South Africa’s largest city.
On Thursday, some of the residents of the building’s maze of shacks and other improvised homes threw themselves out of windows to escape the fire and may have died as a result, according to a local government official.
An emergency services spokesperson said that seven of the victims were children, with the youngest being one year old.
According to witnesses, there may have been as many as 200 people living in the building.
Rescue workers anticipated discovering more victims as they made their way through the building, which was slowed down by the conditions inside.
On a nearby side road, dozens of bodies were arranged in a line, some wrapped in silver sheets and blankets, others in body bags.
The fire, which started at around 1am (11:00 GMT Wednesday) in the center of Johannesburg’s central business district, also injured 52 other people, according to Robert Mulaudzi, a spokesperson for Johannesburg Emergency Services Management.
There are many abandoned and broken-down buildings in the area, and they are frequently occupied by people who are desperately looking for a place to stay. They are known as “hijacked buildings,” according to city officials.
Mulaudzi predicted that the death toll would rise and that there would be more bodies trapped inside the structure.
He said it took three hours to put out the fire, and by mid-morning they had only reached three of the five floors of the structure.
“This is a tragedy for Johannesburg. Over 20 years in the service, I’ve never come across something like this,” Mulaudzi said.
According to news outlets, the cause of the fire is not yet known.
Although the fire had been mostly put out, smoke could still be seen coming through the windows of the burned-out structure.
Some of the windows also had strings of sheets and other materials hanging from them. It was unclear if people had used those to try to flee the fire or if they had done so in an effort to save their belongings.
Source-Aljazeera
